Banknote deposit machine, processing system and method

Abstract

A printed note deposit machine, comprises: a user recognition unit identifying a user with an authenticated person; an inlet unit serving as a receiving teller in which printed notes are deposited; a dispensing unit receiving printed notes deposited in the inlet unit to dispense them in sequence; an identifying unit classifying the dispensed printed notes into four categories of authenticated notes, counterfeit notes, unidentifiable notes, and rejected notes, and identified them with the four categories; a temporary money holder temporarily storing the authenticated, counterfeit, and unidentified notes but the rejected ones therein; a plurality of storage cells storing the printed notes after they are temporarily stored in the previous stage; and a rejection unit accumulating the printed notes identified with the rejected notes by the identifying unit to return them to the user. A printed note deposit system, comprises: a plurality of the printed note deposit machines; a database apparatus installed in a central office and receiving transaction data from the memory of each of the printed note deposit machines to accumulate the transaction data; and a trace unit matching the transaction data accumulated in the database apparatus with transaction data on the detected counterfeit or unidentified notes to track down a user of the unauthenticated notes.

1. A banknote deposit machine, comprising:
 an inlet unit in which banknotes are deposited; 
 an identifying unit classifying received banknotes into four categories of authenticated notes, counterfeit notes, unidentifiable notes, and rejected notes; 
 a temporary money holder for temporarily storing therein the banknotes classified as authenticated notes, counterfeit notes, and unidentified notes by the identifying unit; and 
 a plurality of storage cells provided inside the machine, respectively, for storing the banknotes which have been temporarily stored in the temporary money holder, 
 wherein the counterfeit and unidentified notes temporarily stored in the temporary money holder are stored in predetermined storage cells of the plurality of the storage cells, the authenticated notes temporarily stored in the temporary money holder are stored in any of the plurality of the storage cells other than the predetermined storage cells for the counterfeit and unidentified notes, and 
 in response to an instruction to return the deposited banknotes, the authenticated notes temporarily stored in the temporary money holder are returned to a user, and the counterfeit and the unidentified notes temporarily stored in the temporary money holder are stored in predetermined storage cells of the plurality of the storage cells. 
 
     
     
       2. The banknote deposit machine according to  claim 1 , further comprising a rejection unit for accumulating the banknotes which have been classified as rejected notes by the identifying unit. 
     
     
       3. The banknote deposit machine according to  claim 1 , wherein the temporary money holder is single in number. 
     
     
       4. The banknote deposit machine according to  claim 1 , wherein the identifying unit includes a serial number reader unit to read a serial number unique to each of the banknotes. 
     
     
       5. The banknote deposit machine according to  claim 1 , wherein the identifying unit includes a plurality of sensors which detect characteristics of the banknotes to classify the banknotes into the categories. 
     
     
       6. The banknote deposit machine according to  claim 1 , further comprising: a user identification unit identifying a user; and
 a memory in which transaction data is stored, the data including at least one of the user information obtained by the user identification unit, the banknote information obtained by the identifying unit and information of the machine. 
 
     
     
       7. The banknote deposit machine according to  claim 6 , further comprising a communication unit transmitting the transaction data to an external apparatus. 
     
     
       8. A banknote processing system, comprising:
 a plurality of the banknote deposit machines as defined in  claim 6 ; 
 a database unit, installed in a central office, for receiving transaction data from each of the banknote deposit machines to accumulate the transaction data; and 
 a trace unit comparing the transaction data accumulated in the database unit and the transaction data on the detected counterfeit or unidentified notes.